Some random items that have flown through my mind this morning:
- While driving in to the office this morning, I heard an interview on POTUS 08 with a Zogby staffer, where the obvious question was asked: why were the Democratic polls seemingly so off?
Two working theories were offered. First, most publicized polls tend to run over multiple days. It’s been observed that shortly after “big news” (like Obama’s win /Clinton’s loss in Iowa), a 2-3 day major bump can occur in polling, as folks react with their guts before their brains catch up. Given the short window between Iowa and New Hampshire, polls hadn’t had a chance to fully reflect the erosion of that quick, short-term bump. Apparently the latest couple of daily polling data (not publicized, but merged into Zogby’s last 3 day poll) had started looking much closer.
Second, the Zogby minion pointed out that exit polling suggested that about 18% of D voters made up their minds in the last 24 hours of the New Hampshire campaign. That creates a high level of uncertainty which, in a close, highly hyped race, can’t be accurately reflected in the polls.
- Periodically, I’ve wondered if the public wouldn’t be better served if election law prohibited redistribution of polling results in the week leading up to an election. I wouldn’t prohibit polling, partly for Constitutional reasons, and partly because it does provide theoretically useful information to candidates…but I wonder if legislation (or an FEC reg) could be crafted so that such information couldn’t be passed along to third parties.
Granted, I don’t know that a ban would be effective in this day and age of rampant media links and the apparent breadth of political blogging, but it would be an interesting tactic to reduce any bias such data might introduce into the minds of voters.
Such a moratorium is one I’ve thought about off and on in the past. However, given the surprise results last night, and some of the anecdotal comments of how potential Obama voters might have stayed home, or flipped over to the GOP primary….
- One other comment I’ve heard in a couple of different venues this morning is that it’s probably good for the D’s that New Hampshire turned out as it did.
If Obama were to go on to become the Democratic nominee, it would presumably be better experience for him to be further battle-tempered by going against Hillary for a bit longer.
Similarly, while Hillary may be sufficiently tested by fire, she could use the additional campaigning to better hone her skills and fine-tune her message ahead of going against the GOP (and Bloomberg, if he does enter the ring).